The double murder of two teenage girls in Virginia Beach was the case that got away for the team of detectives that worked it 45 years ago, the Chief of Police said Wednesday.

When 19-year-olds Lynn Seethaler and Janice Pietropola were brutally murdered while on vacation in the resort city on June 30, 1973, every detective in the department was put on the case and chased countless leads. They retired empty handed with the crime unsolved.

On Monday, that all changed when alleged killer Ernest Broadnax was busted in New York City after crucial DNA evidence linked him to the crime, police sources have said.

The detectives who worked the case were called and told the good news, Chief Jim Cervera said at a news conference.

“They were elated that we were able to bring this case to resolve,” Cervera told reporters.

“I will let you know that when I came on to the police department in 1978, those detectives were all sergeants. I worked for many of them during that time so it was kind of really personally satisfying to be able to contact the detectives who worked the case … these detectives here take a lot of this personal. They take it home with them, they live with them,” Cervera went on.

He said when detectives like that retire, they’re usually asked “what’s the one thing you wish?”

“I wish I could have solved” that case, the officers respond, Cervera said.

Broadnax, 80, is charged with two counts of murder and one count of rape and will be at a city jail in the Bronx before he’s extradited to Virginia on April 22.

He’s accused of strangling Seethaler, shooting her in the cheek and the temple and slashing her in the throat with a broken wine bottle. He’s also accused of raping, strangling and shooting Pietropola three times on the right side of the head.

Police previously said in 2011 the girls’ death was likely the work of a serial killer after a series of deaths and disappearances of women with similar appearances swept through the oceanfront area in the years after the high school pals were killed.

Cervera declined to say if Broadnax is responsible for any of the other unsolved deaths.

The Seethaler and Pietropola murder case is the coldest case they’ve solved, Cervera said.